Psych! The Verve return with extended jam

Does anyone actually think Urban Hymns is a good album? The singles are the highlights, after owning the album for a decade I still can't listen to the thing all the way through.

I remember that in some end of the year polls it actually beat OK Computer, which I thought was a travesty at the time. And I was 11.

if it was Ashcroft-heavy material. He hated Urban Hymns.

By the same token, I don't like anyone I've never met, any countries I've never been to, or any books I've never read. Which is all of them. Because they're rubbish.

For what little it's worth, I really enjoyed the download. Good to hear them getting back to what they're good at, ie, not horrible horrible ballads.

BUT I don't think anyone can say with any real validity what guitar-based music should or shouldn't sound like. Hearing The Verve's first album had as life-changing an effect on me as the first Clash album (and the first Tori Amos, PJ Harvey and These Animal Men albums, come to think of it...). I suppose some of the best Verve stuff is fairly "formless", in that it's obviously written by jamming, with the emphasis far more on the dynamics between bass, drums and guitar than on commercially-sensible verse/chorus/miaow structures and hooks, but to write them off as "nonsense" for caring more about playing music for the absolute love of playing music (I suppose now they can afford to indulge themselves without needing to worry about commercial considerations) is kind of missing the point of what The Verve were originally all about - and what it seems, thank fuck, they're all about again.

Or maybe you just don't like them... which is fair enough. I don't much care for early MBA. :-)

S*M*A*S*H were all mouth and no trousers.

Actually, their trousers were quite good.

But the lyrics were rubbish.